Friday Food: Leftovers Upon Leftovers

Friday 

Short version: Chocolate chip pancakes, salad

Long version: A. Cubby, and Calvin were gone on their elk-scouting trip, and the younger two asked for chocolate chip pancakes for dinner. This is about the only time I allow pancakes for dinner, much less chocolate chip ones. There has to be some benefit to staying home with boring old mom.

I had a salad that used up the last of the taco stew meat from last week that I suspected was multiplying in the refrigerator overnight. I finally triumphed over it, though.

It's the little things in life.

The campers had a big foil packet of hamburgers and potatoes they heated up in their campfire.

A. took this photo of bacon cooking on that same campfire the next morning, just so I would have it to post here. Can you tell he's been married to a blogger for a very long time?

Saturday

Short version: Beef soup, garlic bread

Long version: I had been planning to make pizza, but when the three campers arrived home in the morning, they all said they felt a bit sick. I had already taken out several packages of oxtail and beef soup bones--in an attempt to get some bulky stuff out of the freezer before more red meat possibly arrives in the form of an elk--so I used the pressure cooker to make beef stock, then used the stock, meat picked off the bones, vegetables, and rice to make soup.

After resting and napping, the slightly sick ones were fully recovered--possibly they had some altitude sickness from strenuous hiking at high altitude--but they had soup anyway. At least there was garlic bread.

I took a picture of my very fancy presentation of food on the table.

No sense in dirtying another plate for the bread and cheese when there's already a handy napkin there. Besides, that would be six extra dishes to wash, and you know how I feel about that.

Sunday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, boiled potatoes, green salad with ranch dressing, apple hand pies

Long version: Almost the last of our potatoes from the garden. The last ones are always the smallest ones, so I didn't peel them. Instead I just washed them as best I could and then boiled them. I figured any remaining dirt would come off while they were boiling.

A gentleman at our church gave us a big bag of pears and another of apples. It was Cubby's turn to choose dessert, and he always likes pie of any kind, so we made apple hand pies.

Hand pies are just small circles of pie dough folded in half over filling and sealed, so they're an individual kind of dessert, which is fun. We used the MiL's proportions for the pie dough (it's not detailed enough to be called a recipe), which is 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup butter, 1/3 lard, bit of salt, and ice water added by tablespoons until it sticks together.

We didn't have any lard, so we used all butter, and this was the first time any pie crust I was involved in making actually came out right.

Not that I was the only one involved in making it, of course.

Poppy did the fork crimping.

An excellent toddler activity.

I'm not a huge fan of pie crust, so I prefer full-sized pies with their greater ratio of filling to pie crust, but the hand pies came out well.

Not the prettiest, but tasty.

Monday

Short version: Recombined leftovers, carrot sticks with ranch dip

Long version: There was about a pound and a half of ground beef left from making hamburgers, plus quite a bit of the boiled potatoes. So I browned the meat, seasoned it heavily with salt, pepper, garlic powder, minced onion, and paprika, then added the potatoes and some shredded cheese.

These sorts of meals never look like much, but they perform the function of feeding the family in a tasty and easy way, which is all I'm going for most of the time.

Again, not the prettiest, but tasty.

Tuesday

Short version: Meat hand pies, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: The recipe Cubby and I used for the pie crust made enough dough for two crusts, so I used the second one and filled the crusts with some extra shepherd's pie meat I had frozen when I made shepherd's pie last week. I added some cheese on top of the meat, too, but I think it needed a lot more salt and flavorings, since the pie crust is much less seasoned than the mashed potatoes used in shepherd's pie.

I had a salad with some of the meat in it, and A. had the meat with some rice I had also made.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: I combined the very last of the shepherd's pie meat with the leftover rice and some grated cheese to make a skillet meal for everyone but Cubby and me. We had a soup I had made for lunch the day before with the leftover meat and potato skillet, some leftover hamburgers, fried onions, and frozen green beans.

Thursday

Short version: Pizza, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: My sister arrived this day from Florida for a short visit, so I made pizza for her first dinner with us. One with just cheese, one with half bacon and half kalamata olives and mushrooms. Yum.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?